20th Anniversary of National Disability Employment Awareness Month
The AbilityOne Program would like to enlist your support of our recognition events celebrating the 20th Anniversary of October’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month. These events are taking place around the country. During the programs, we will honor our AbilityOne partners and individuals’ achievements and ask that you send local representatives in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago to attend and show your agency’s support.
This is the first time we have sponsored program-level events in four quadrants of the United States. The objective is to increase awareness through the ceremonies and participation of AbilityOne-participating nonprofit agencies in the events. The Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws have broken through many of the legal and physical barriers, but attitudinal barriers remain the greatest challenge to employment for people with disabilities.
The challenge and journey it takes to change attitudes is often a long and difficult one. I believe that the challenge is met when we rise to it and the change takes hold when we refuse to settle for anything less than our objective. Our objective is increase employment for our target population and these events are designed to raise awareness so that objective can be achieved.
Throughout the year other opportunities to increase awareness may include highlighting new AbilityOne contract awards with ribbon-cutting ceremonies, providing VIP tour visits to nonprofit agencies, and recognizing AbilityOne and federal employees with award presentations. These all offer an opportunity to educate the federal workforce and to develop new employment opportunities for this unique federal procurement program.
We appreciate your support of using National Disability Employment Awareness Month as a special opportunity to recognize the AbilityOne Program and the people it employs in support of you, our federal customers.
Thank you for your support and thank you for helping us “Put Ability to Work for You!
